Tips for Excelling as a Web Designers

In our industry, the design industry, it is often said that to be successful, one must be a jack of all trades. You might be wondering what is this jack of all trades and how to be one…?

Today I thought I would describe this issue for Web Designers. This article is a compilation of tips that should help graphic and web designers to enhance their circle of knowledge and translate it into commercial success.

The idea behind creating this article was to enable web designers improve their progress in this demanding field.

This article is basically for beginners and intermediate professionals, but the seasoned gurus will also find a few valuable bits.

Introduction

Before I get on with the tips, let me just define what a web designer’s job is. Web designers are suppose to design the layouts of websites in any tool they like, such as Adobe Photoshop or (Late) Macromedia Fireworks. The layout is exported into an HTML file, and the designer’s work is done.

Now let’s check out what you can learn that would increase your value, and provide you with more profit.

SEO

Don’t be surprised, I’m not telling you to try to become an SEO master, just the basics are enough. To tell you the truth, if you get the basics of Search Engine Optimization right, you will capture a pretty good position in search engines. There are also many free services in the market that provide this SE Submission service free of charge.

Here, I’m only talking about the SEO that anyone with the simple knowledge of basic HTML can perform easily.

Keep the Text

Whenever you design a website that might require a good position in search engines (show me a site that doesn’t need it), design only the backgrounds and don’t add the text.

It should be added by coding. This is because text is search engine friendly while a picture is not. So as much text your site contains instead of images, much are the chances of acquiring a decent place in search engines.

Submissions

There are two kinds of submissions for SEO. Most of the search engines need you to feed your website’s URL into them, only then they would be able to search through your site. So adding your URL into search engines is essential, but there’s also another kind of submission.

Internet Tools

Now let’s take a look at the tools that could be really helpful to you, if you are a web designer. Anew I’m assuming that though you are a just web designer, not a developer, you still have a rudimental knowledge of HTML.

WordPress

You would know what WordPress is right…. The most popular CMS in the history of internet. To know more about WordPress, take a look at this WordPress Infographic.

If you know the terminology used in WordPress and how its template is made, designing a something for WordPress would become a lot easier. There is a huge market for professionals who can design WordPress a theme.

All you have to do to get acquainted with this CMS is just to start a blog with it. Since your personal blog is a self defining item of your caliber and talent, it increases your CV value a great deal.

Internet Glossaries

Keep circulating over the web design and web development related glossaries. Knowing the terminology and its application is quite essential for a web designer. If you are familiar with a developer’s terminology, all the developers would want you to be their teammate, instead of somebody who can’t understand their words and their needs.

Conclusion

Web Designers do only half the work, the rest is done by Web Developers. So a harmony among the two is “sine qua non”, indispensable. I personally feel that developers usually do have an idea of the designer’s needs, but it doesn’t work the other way around. If you are a designer, try to understand what the developer expects from you and believe me, they don’t ask for much and you would not have a problem learning their requirements.